Dan’s 2025 Board Gaming

Thebalt knew that the mysterious lady communicated with the King via dreams, so he travelled East to the castle construction site and the beach beneath it, where he had already experienced vivid dreams. Alas, it didn’t work. So then he began travelling towards the west of the island. This paid off. He had one had recurring dreams where he could see the mysterious lady was being held against her will somewhere.

Meanwhile, the enemy army that was de-powering the statues had become a serious threat, so Thebalt recruited a large army and engaged them in battle, wiping them out.

As Thebalt sought better locations for his dream communications with the mysterious lady, he found the Treetop Cathedral that was under construction. These hunter cultists were usually very distrustful of outsiders, but as Thebalt had helped a band of them out before, he was able to ingratiate himself with the group and join their cult.

By now, the dreams had revealed that the mysterious lady was being held in the Wyrdfort. Thebalt had no choice but to break into it and mount a rescue. He considered using his troops as a distraction, but realised they would have next to no impact on the fort’s defences, so he just decided to send them off to safety and just sneak in. Stealth almost worked perfectly – Thebalt only had to fight a single sentry that discovered him. He rescued the mysterious lady, and as they made their way out the fort they were attacked by none other than the monster that had killed Merlin. The mysterious lady used some sort of teleport spell to get them out safely. The showed Thebalt a vision of the King meeting with her in a spire to the North of the island, then vanished.

Thebalt returned to the King to report his success. The King prepared to travel alone to his rendezvous with the mysterious lady, while he assigned Thebalt another task. The hunter cultists were prophesizing doom to the kingdom. Arthur wanted Thebalt to infiltrate the cult and determine if there was any truth to their prophecies.

Thebalt travelled East into the swamps where he found the asylum that housed the rest of the infected people of Tuathan. It was protected by the Red Guard, the very military unit he had petitioned the King to establish. Although he thought they would be dismayed to learn that their brothers had been thrown into battle unsupported, they were in fact happy that they had had the opportunity to die in battle. Thebalt found many who were willing to follow him in exchange for the opportunity to have a similar death.

Thebalt then led his force of elite Red Guards North to the castle construction site. There he found that work had stopped after a number of workers mysteriously died during the evenings. Thebalt waited until evening himself, and standing on the cliffs to the rear of the castle, he noticed the glyphs on the beach below making and ominous magical glow. He felt drawn to them, but the sensation passed.

Travelling back inland, building a lift mechanism to allow for swift travel from the cliff tops to the swamp, then heading back East to the beach, Thebalt did indeed find many dead bodies at the base of the cliff. It would appear that the workers, upon seeing the glowing beach in the evenings, had been compelled to walk off the cliffs and fall to their deaths. Thebalt destroyed the magical glyphs drawn into the beaches, ending their magical alluring effect.

Thebalt reported his findings to the castle, and the workers were happy to resume work. He then returned to King Arthur who had a new task for him. The King confided that he had travelled to Tuathan at the behest of a lady who appeared in his dreams. Only once here did he realise that this lady was a Foredweller, one of mankind’s enemies. She still haunts his dreams. The King has asked Thebalt to track her down and assess her. If she’s a friend, find out what she wants. If she’s an enemy, kill her.

Thebalt knew he had to travel far to the East and report what he had learned to King Arthur, who’s seat of power was at Tintagel.

The journey was very difficult. Along the way Thebalt had several fights that left him badly injured, inhibiting his ability to travel effectively.

Eventually, Thebalt reached the outskirts of Thebalt where a robed stranger insisted on blindfolding him and taking him to a secret meeting. There, Thebalt was asked to spy on the King. Thebalt initially refused, so they gave him a pendant which they said would allow their agents to recognise him again in the future. Thebalt was a Knight, and so had no intention of ever betraying his oaths to the King. As soon as he had left their company, Thebalt discarded the pendant.

Thebalt then reported directly to King Arthur. The King was grateful for Thebalt’s findings, and having shown great resilience in surviving the battles and travelling across the island, the King tasked Thebalt with one of four possible quests. Thebalt chose to help with the problems Arthur was having with building his new Camelot – thinking it would relate to military architecture. Further details revealed it was a more clandestine investigation of sabotage that would be required, but by that point it was too late for Thebalt to back out.

Thebalt made steady progress travelling East, activating Menhir’s along the way. At one point he encountered more survivors. He approached them, intent on telling them where they could safely hide with the others, but it was a trap. Once close, they jumped up and surrounded him, intent on robbing him blind. Thebalt simply removed his mask to show them is plague scarred face. They weren’t so keen on taking all his possessions then.

Everything was going well until Thebalt encountered an entire Foredweller army blocking his path. Thebalt had no choice but to return to the Last Outpost and convince the survivors to form into an army. It was a difficult sell, but he managed to form a band of militia. They all travelled East again, but as they neared the army Merlin suggested scouting the enemy army. Merlin cast some divinations, and it became apparent that the forces under his command would not win. In his travels Thebalt had found another cache of weapons though, so now they could support more militia.

Thebalt hiked West once more, returning to the Last Outpost. He raised a second band of militia. Then they travelled East again, confronted the Foredweller army, and defeated them. However, as the last of the Foredwellers were surrounded and about to be wiped out, they summoned some terrible, glowing beast. The militia and Thebalt ran for their lives. Merlin tried to hold off the monster, only to be disintegrated in seconds.

Thebalt’s army is now scattered, but as Thebalt came out of hiding he saw that the way East was now open.

Thebalt and the survivors he had managed to gather hid in their sanctuary for three days. During that time Merlin recovered from his injuries and made it clear that he needed to study the giant statue that Thebalt and he had been able to hide in during the battle. To do so, he would need to retrieve his magical notes and tools from the shipwrecks of the fleet.

So once it was safe enough to travel once more, Thebalt travelled to the wrecked fleet and retrieved Merlin’s belongings. He resisted the urge to open the chest and rummage through Merlin’s paraphernalia. He then met Merlin at the statue, and spent the next couple of days helping Merlin investigate the statue’s powers.

Then Merlin was able to devise a ritual that enhanced the power of the statue, repelling wyrdness from the statue up to a great distance. The ritual was very draining for Merlin, but he was able to teach it to Thebalt, who is now tasked with travelling East, enhancing the statues as he goes, so that the survivors might make a safe path back home.

For this playthrough I’m playing as Thebalt. He’s a Knight who contracted the Red Death. His wife spotted the infection and turned him in. Stripped of all titles, he was locked away with all the other infected. Upon hearing of the planned invasion of Avalon, he proposed that those infected with military experience be formed into a military unit that could perform one last function before death. His proposal was accepted and he led the unit into battle first as an assault force. To his horror, reinforcements did not follow to take advantage of their work. He’d been betrayed again – the real plan was to just let the infected run forwards and die. The general had no intention of following their action up.

Chapter One begins shortly after the above. The army was ambushed and obliterated. Thebalt survives by hiding in a strange, giant statue. An injured Merlin struggles to the same hiding place, and uses a magical scroll to teleport them outside the battlefield. Thebalt has to then explore the surrounding areas, searching for a safe haven where the survivors can hide from the enemy and then leading as many survivors there as possible, before Merlin finishes his spell and seals the sanctuary away from the enemy.

Time to switch to Tainted Grail. I haven’t played this in two or three years. The game comes with four campaigns. I’ve played the first twice, and then the second once. Next I’ll play the third campaign.

My first campaign playthrough was documented as a project (https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1467741/). The other campaigns I just played and didn’t turn into a project.

It took me ages to setup ready to play. The cards I need for the third campaign and my chosen character were hard to find – until I realised that when I last finished playing I had planned ahead and taken all the cards I would need to start this third campaign and put them to one side. Once found, setup went much quicker!

I’ve now played every single player scenario, so I thought I’d have a go at creating a viable “random map” scenario (that was always my preferred game mode in the PC version).

Here are the rules I came up with:

Map Setup

Start with a random level VI-VII tile in the middle, and then spread outwards with a ring of random level IV-V tiles, then II-III tiles and finally place the starting tiles for each faction.

When placing the level II-III tiles, ensure you seed one tile with a gem mine and one tile with a ore mine next to each player. (I didn’t do this, and then found I had no gem mine throughout the game – the game was still playable, but it was a big handicap).

My three player initial setup is shown below.

Scenario rules

• Start with 15 gold, 3 ore and 3 gems
• The victory condition can either be to defeat both heroes (for a shorter game) or to defeat the enemy towns (for a longer game).
• Loss condition is either loosing your hero (for more risky game) or loosing your town (for an easier game).

AI Player Rules

• In their turn, the AI heroes follow the following logic:
  1. If the hero is on the same tile as the human player’s hero, move towards them and attack them.
  2. If not on the same tile as the human player’s hero, move to flag any claimable hex on the current tile or visit any visitable hex. Assume the AI hero uses up any visitable location (so put a black cube on it) and assume they win all combats.
  3. If step one cannot be done (because everywhere is claimed), move towards the next tile which is closer to the human player, revel it, then enter it.

Resolving Combat with AI Heroes

• The AI hero’s army is based on the current game turn. For each turn, add a bronze level troop until all bronze troops have been added. Then for each turn turn a bronze troop into a pack. Once all the bronze troops are pack, proceed in the same way with silver troops then the gold troops. E.g. if fighting the AI hero on turn eight, all three of their bronze troops will be packs, and they will have both their silver troops at the few level.
• The enemy hero’s deck consists of three might cards, two magic cards, and one skill card. They know four random spells and have one random ability card.
• If a spell or ability don’t make sense in context of the combat, ignore the card and draw another.

You can see how my first battle with an AI hero setup below.

Overall the game worked well. The first AI fight was over very quickly, but that was mainly because undead have low initiative and my army just acted so much faster than them. The second battle, against the Dungeon Overlords, was much closer. It lasted three of four turns and my army took a lot of damage.

Wrapping up with HoM&M for now

I’ve now played 19 single player scenarios plus this homebrew. On average they took two to three hours each, so that’s about 50 hours of gameplay. That’s all from an ~£170 Kickstarter. £3.40 per hour is not bad. It will only get better if I ever play it again, or if I choose to paint up the models.